00:00We can now bring in Mark Storella, Professor of the Practice of Diplomacy at the Frederick S. Party School of Global Studies at Boston University.
00:09Thank you so much for joining us here on the program.
00:10You were also a former U.S. ambassador to Zambia.
00:14Now, Donald Trump is marking a year in office as protests continue in Minneapolis two weeks after Rene Good was killed by an ICE officer.
00:21Have the administration's attempts to spin what happened backfired?
00:25Delano, I think that this issue of immigration is absolutely central to what Donald Trump is because he's trying to whip up as much grievance against foreigners and others and blame others and using that as a means of centralizing power in his own hands, including, as your reporter just said, bringing the military into American cities.
00:48Americans don't like it.
00:49People are passing around copies of the Declaration of Independence showing that the things we complained about George III doing 250 years ago, Donald Trump is doing today.
01:00So he is facing a potential backlash right now.
01:03We see the backlash he's facing from the streets.
01:05But over the past year, it seems that Donald Trump's understanding on the needs of immigration in terms of certain sectors in the United States seems to have evolved, particularly when it comes to things like tech or agriculture.
01:18Does he realize he needs certain immigrants and has that been translated well enough to his base?
01:26Has that the need for America to have certain types of immigrants?
01:31Donald Trump has very few ideas, but two of them are that he's are that he opposes immigration and he favors tariffs.
01:38When he opposed immigration and closed it down, many American businesses went to him and said, we need talented workers.
01:45We need people to pick the lettuce.
01:46And so he had people in his office telling him, you've got to change.
01:51He is indeed pragmatic.
01:53And so he has made certain adjustments.
01:55But overall, the trend is not good.
01:582025 was the first year in at least 50 years and perhaps 90 years in which the United States has had net negative immigration.
02:06Immigrants, people who are talented, students, people who come to learn, people who want to work temporarily on our farms are de-risking themselves from the United States by not coming to the United States.
02:19So he is actually hurting the United States economy through these actions, even though he's trying to adjust.
02:25Do you think America is losing its luster in terms of attracting talent, whether it's in education, to come to study there or work there?
02:35There is absolutely no doubt about it.
02:39I am sitting in an American university, the largest one in Massachusetts, and we have fewer foreign graduate students coming to study here.
02:46I know people here in Boston, center of technology of almost the world.
02:51And I know people who are losing their visas, who are feeling they can't risk staying in the United States and are choosing to work someplace else.
03:01It's happening clearly in terms of the statistics, but also anecdotally, we see it.
03:07Mark, I hate to switch gears with you, but I see that you're a former ambassador.
03:12So I have to ask, Donald Trump is digging in his heels in threats over Greenland.
03:16And it doesn't seem that the U.S. president can be talked out of annexing the territory, or can he?
03:23Well, he bases his policies on urges.
03:26He has said that he needs Greenland for psychological reasons.
03:29He's angry that he didn't get a Nobel Peace Prize.
03:32He will be constrained only by his own morality.
03:35So it seems like he is a bull in the global China shop.
03:39But in fact, NATO allies are saying, you know what?
03:42This is too much.
03:43And what's more, American members of Congress are in Denmark saying, you know, this is a great ally.
03:49They will give us anything we want in terms of security.
03:52We don't need to do this.
03:53And amazingly, the latest poll shows that 75% of Americans oppose taking Greenland at all,
04:00and 95% oppose doing it through military force.
04:03You cannot get 95% of Americans to agree that the world is round.
04:07But 95% are opposed to using military force against a NATO ally.
04:11And where's Trump's relationship when it comes to Europe?
04:16Because the way he talks about certain European leaders, and essentially, if he doesn't get what he wants,
04:21he's threatening to hike up tariffs on certain European states,
04:25even though a trade agreement was agreed to last year between the United States and Europe.
04:31You know, if you want to work in international relations, you must work on the basis of trust.
04:38Trust means that you will keep your word.
04:40He doesn't keep his word.
04:42He switches tariffs left and right.
04:45And our allies, frankly, are losing trust in the United States as a reliable ally.
04:50That is why we've seen Britain and France come to an entente on how they will coordinate their own nuclear programs.
04:57That is why we're seeing the Germans saying they're going to spend much more money on national defense.
05:03And that is why we see the Europeans trying to stake out a separate position from the United States
05:07in terms of the war that Russia has brought to Ukraine.
05:12They are de-risking from the United States because we no longer seem to be a reliable ally.
05:17And in terms of Donald Trump's relationship with NATO,
05:23is the military alliance, is its future a thing of the past?
05:30Well, people have been saying that for a long time, so I would not count NATO out yet.
05:34There are many, many things that make NATO valuable to all of us.
05:38And it's the most successful alliance in the history of the world.
05:41That's actually true.
05:42So we should stick with it.
05:43Having said that, there are limits to what our NATO allies are going to be willing to put up with.
05:48And certainly bullying and threatening one of our NATO allies is beyond the pale.
05:53The United States under Trump has provided exactly zero financial and military assistance to Ukraine.
05:59European countries have had to pick up that enormous budget all by themselves.
06:03They have to make a kind of assessment of what they're getting out of this alliance.
06:09I think that what we've seen is that since 1949, there have been 10 Soviet and Russian leaders
06:17who have all had as their principal objective in foreign policy, breaking up the NATO alliance.
06:23And it turns out they couldn't achieve it, but it could be that Trump will.
06:26We'll see how things span out.
06:28Mark Zorala, thank you so much for joining us on the program today.
06:31It's a pleasure to be with you.
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